My Prison Cell: Learning to Hear on a Cardboard Piano

Every time I got a new cellmate, I warned him, “Don’t be alarmed. I have a cardboard piano that I play.”

ILLUSTRATION BY ELEANOR TAYLOR

I_n February, Jennifer Lackey, a philosophy professor at Northwestern University, where I teach journalism, invited me to speak to a class she teaches at the Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison an hour outside of Chicago. Her students, fifteen men, are all serving long sentences, mostly for violent crimes. Some will be at Stateville until they die. I talked with the students about storytelling, and had them complete an exercise in which they described their cells._

I was so taken by what they wrote that I suggested that they develop these stories about the space, which, for some, had been home for twenty years. Over the past ten months, I have worked with them from draft to draft to draft. This process was not without obstacles. Sometimes, Jennifer couldn’t return my marked-up drafts because the prison was on lockdown. One student missed class for a month because, after surgery, he had to wear a knee brace, which the prison considered a potential weapon. Another student was transferred to a different prison. (I continued working with him by mail and phone.) One despaired at my comments and edits, writing to me that “this must be my last draft because clearly I’m incapable of doing it correctly.” But with encouragement and gentle nudging they kept going. Below is one of five of these stories that will appear on the site this week.

—Alex Kotlowitz

On my bottom bunk bed, I sat in deep thought. I had an unusual problem. The prison choir that I sang in needed a piano player, and they needed one quickly. I thought to myself, How could I teach myself to play? I had no prior experience with the piano, but I can still remember running down the hallways of my grandmother’s house as a boy. Every time I ran past her old upright piano, I would slam all the keys at the same time. Sometimes in the mornings before school, as I listened to cassette tapes of my favorite R. & B. and gospel songs by Mary J. Blige and John P. Kee, I imagined myself playing the piano. I sang in the church choir from the age of seven on. In the sixth grade, I learned to play the xylophone. I had an uncle who played piano professionally at Las Vegas casinos and on cruise ships. When he came to visit, I sat in awe as he played our upright. Music has been my constant companion. It’s like my DNA has tiny quarter notes infused into it.

One day while I was watching TV in my cell, I flipped past a show on BET that highlighted famous musicians, including the gospel singer Andrae Crouch, who described his first piano. It was made out of cardboard. I had an idea that was literally out of the box.

The first moment I could, I searched for a cardboard box. I wandered by cells, examining the garbage. I rummaged through every trash bag I could find. I soon realized that it was tissue day. Every Tuesday, the institution hands out hundreds of rolls of tissue, one roll per inmate. I knew that there would be plenty of cardboard boxes around. I found a large empty box abandoned at the end of the gallery. I tore off the top flaps and quickly went back to my cell.

In the prison church, I had taken measurements of the keyboard, and I cut a piece from the cardboard box. But it wasn’t long enough. I needed seventy-six keys to mimic the prison’s piano. So I stapled two sections together. I then took ten sheets of white typing paper and wrapped them around the cardboard. To make keys, I used a case for a cassette tape to draw straight lines. For the white keys, I used a black pen to outline them. For the black keys, I cut small rectangles out of black construction paper. I attached the keys with clear packing tape. Now my cardboard piano looked realistic, so much so that an officer walking past doing count did a double take. He was so taken aback with my piano that he walked straight into a wall. He asked to see me play, which I did, and he laughed good-heartedly. Music, even imaginary music, does that to people.

Now came the hard part. I had to somehow take the music in my head and make it a reality. I asked my mother to send me some beginner’s piano books. The first few weeks, I mainly focussed on scales. I got immensely frustrated. The books that I had were too basic, and I only had access to the real piano for one hour on Sundays. So I called home again and asked my mother to send some professional books on chords, on harmony, and on music theory. She also threw in a Piano for Dummies book, just for fun. I studied these books day and night, carrying them everywhere I went: to the yard, to the chow hall, and to choir practice. Someone in the choir gave me the nickname “Kirk Franklin.” Even the guards came to call me that, and one guard asked me how she could get her son involved in music.

I positioned my practice space at the end of my bunk bed. I was fortunate to have the bottom bunk, and so I used my small property box as a piano bench. I folded my mattress on itself, and then placed the piano on the steel bunk bed. For hours at a time, I would practice finger positions and how to build chords. Sometimes, I would hum the sound of the keys as I tapped on the cardboard. I had one cellie ask, only partly joking, “Do you need me to call a psych doctor for you?” Every time I got a new cellmate I would warn him, “Don’t be alarmed. I have a cardboard piano that I play.” I had one cellie ask me to teach him to play. First, I showed him that music is alive and always moving. But, when we sat down on our bunk beds to learn the mechanics, he lacked the focus and the imagination to learn on the cardboard piano. He lasted only a couple of weeks. I practiced for hours on end, to the point where I developed calluses on my fingers. Every couple of months, I needed to make a new piano because of the wear and tear from my practice sessions. After going through five keyboards, I made a heavy-duty keyboard by tripling the materials. It has lasted over five years.

I was making progress. Every Sunday, I got to try what I’d learned on a real piano, but I’d be so nervous that my hands would shake and I’d hit the wrong keys. To hide my mistakes, I’d play softly and let the voices of the choir cover it up. I preferred playing the cardboard piano in the privacy of my cell.

Gospel music and most pop and R. & B. songs are infused with blues and jazz. A whole new world of music opened up before me. I learned new techniques and styles of music. I also created my own fingering positions, and discovered the formulas and equations to many of my favorite songs. Take, for instance, the song “Ribbon in the Sky,” by Stevie Wonder. This song starts with a one, two, three-chord progression. Once I figured this out I could use it in other keys. I felt like a musical chemist, experimenting with all types of chord progressions.

I began this process with just one note on the real piano. The key of C was my favorite. This is mainly because all the white keys belonged to the key of C. You could never go wrong. Just hit the white keys. I would repeat the note by humming it to myself. Then I would memorize it, and take it back to my cell and build every combination. Through a process of elimination, the one that worked I would memorize and learn it in every key. This process enabled me to quickly locate and learn almost every chord in music. It also enabled me to teach and create new songs for the choir quickly.

I was recently transferred to Pinckneyville Correctional Center. The move was unexpected. As soon as I arrived at the institution, I saw many familiar faces from Stateville. They informed me that the church choir needed a director and a piano player. I took both jobs. After I played the first church service, I explained my unorthodox way of learning music. They got excited. Now I sit in my cell, on a box next to my bunk bed, creating new music and building cardboard pianos for the three men who have accepted the challenge of the pedagogy of the cardboard piano.